


i awake to see that no one is free

by hairtiesoncuffs



Series: falling out of conversations [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s07e17 The Born-Again Identity, Gen, Sam Winchester is Not Okay, alright yeet i'm done, and now he's trying to fix it, basically castiel fricked up, castiel tried to redeem himself, dean just wants to help him, enjoy i guess, i'm so bad at tags it hurts me im sorry, the wall broke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:09:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26236195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hairtiesoncuffs/pseuds/hairtiesoncuffs
Summary: The younger Winchester’s eyes have dark circles under them, something he understands is a sign of extreme tiredness. There are a few cuts on his face, framing the right side, and the tensing and shaking of his muscles from the contraption on his head is much less than it should be, considering the higher-than-safe voltage being used on him. Clearly, every part of Sam is exhausted from trying to keep him awake and upright each day.aka, 7x17, from when cas rescues sam to when he takes on the hallucinationstitle from the lyrics of 'spies’ by coldplay
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel & Sam Winchester
Series: falling out of conversations [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1906321
Comments: 2
Kudos: 32





	i awake to see that no one is free

**Author's Note:**

> eyy welcome to the party 
> 
> rewatched this episode and felt a fic coming, so here it is 
> 
> trigger warnings for (in order) electroshock therapy, mental institution, satan, hallucinations, mentions of torture, and just general spn stuff i guess 
> 
> hope you like this :)

Castiel is alive. 

He can feel his grace now, thrumming under the skin of his vessel and begging for a proper use, telling him that while healing people is good, he was made for greater things. (He was not made to tear away the Wall, was not made to condemn Sam to his memories of Hell, was not made to destroy Dean’s life like this. They are his humans. Castiel is supposed to protect them, no matter the cost.) 

He is an Angel of the Lord, Castiel knows this, but he spent months walking around as Emmanuel and that was all swept to the wayside. Yes, he remembers now, but there are fuzzy bits, moments where he can tell the Leviathans were holding onto him or when he was healing, moments where he feels alien and alone. 

None of it matters. 

He walks into the room where Sam is and the first thing he can see is the weariness. The younger Winchester’s eyes have dark circles under them, something he understands is a sign of extreme tiredness. There are a few cuts on his face, framing the right side, and the tensing and shaking of his muscles from the contraption on his head is much less than it should be, considering the higher-than-safe voltage being used on him. Clearly, every part of Sam is exhausted from trying to keep him awake and upright each day. 

(This is Castiel’s fault. He caused this. He— he _hurt_ Sam, hurt his friend, broke a Wall that was more than a wall and more of a barrier of trust.) 

The demon’s face is an ugly, twisted thing, burnt from time in Hell as a normal soul before it was lost, with deep, sunken eyes. Smiting it is easy, not even a problem, but turning off the electroshock machine and turning to face Sam is a whole other matter. (He did this.) Castiel busies himself by removing the headgear and the mouthguard before trying to speak. Instead of an apology, all he can manage is, “I should never have broken your wall, Sam. I'm here to make it right.” Regret instead of remorse, not that he doesn’t feel the latter. It’s just hard to express. 

He reaches out, slowly touching his fingertips to Sam’s head and closing his eyes, trying not to focus on the jagged edges of Sam’s consciousness. (They should be blunt, only tiny pinpricks and not the shards of glass he can feel. He can’t even imagine how Sam is walking around, there is so much torture and pain and ice, so cold it’s burning him. 

Sam _isn’t_ walking around. Sam is in a mental hospital, unable to sleep or eat because he sees Lucifer. Because the Devil is in his head, whispering to him day and night and Sam has no chance of getting away from him because if he sleeps he has nightmares and if he stays awake he must listen to him. Because of Castiel.) He dives in deeper, shuddering mentally when he senses the truly dark parts of Sam’s mind, the parts touched by demon blood and, further beyond, the horrifically vivid memories of the Cage. 

But when he feels for the Wall, desperate not just to free Sam from this, but himself as well (and isn’t that selfish?) there is nothing. 

Correction: there is dust. Castiel didn’t simply tear down the Wall, he made it _crumble._ There is nothing to repair here. Sam will be left with a psyche that will never recover, and there is nothing Castiel can do. 

Sam looks, not at him, but at something in his place, too tired to even be scared anymore. “You’re not real,” he mutters, turning away as his breath hitches. 

For the first time, Castiel can see what he’s really done. He’s taken a soul, a kind soul that he knows more intimately than almost any other in this world, and while he didn’t inflict the damage on it, he took it and practically held it in his hands, hands that were supposed to heal and wrung every bit of Hell he could get out of it. 

Who does that? 

His throat is thick. “Oh, Sam... I'm so sorry.” 

Sam Winchester only flinches and breathes a little faster. It’s hard to believe he’s the guy that saved the world once. 

* * *

Dean comes in only a minute later, spitting curses. Meg is nowhere to be seen, and Castiel can’t help but be glad for that. He knows Dean doesn’t want anyone to see Sam like this, much less Meg, so the rush of relief doesn’t feel entirely guilty. The growing feeling in his gut, though, is practically made of guilt. Guilt and something else he can’t quite identify. All he knows is that it’s worse than holding every monster from Purgatory inside of him. 

“Sammy?” Dean asks, bolting over to his brother’s side, Sam responding by squeezing his eyes shut tighter. “Alright, hey, Sammy, look at me. It’s Dean, just open your eyes.” 

“Not real,” Sam says again, clearer, more insistent. Dean presses the scar on Sam’s palm (Castiel doesn’t remember that being there) and then, when there’s no reaction, shakes his hand and holds on tighter. 

“I promise you, Sammy, it’s me. Come on, what happened to no chick-flick moments?” Dean asks, trying to add a cheery quality to his tone but failing. Castiel steps back, just a little bit, letting Dean have his space. (He doubts that if Sam manages to come around to any semblance of lucidity, he will want to see Castiel. The angel who obliterated any hope of him remaining sane.) “Just open your eyes and _look at me._ ” 

“Please,” Sam begs, voice all teary and hurt and lost and sounding _young,_ more innocent than Castiel has ever heard it. “Please. Stop.” 

“Whatever you’re seeing right now, Sam, I promise you, it’s not real. It can’t hurt you,” Dean reassures, tracing the scar before pressuring it again. “Focus on this.” 

“Dean’s not real,” Sam gasps, pushing his head back into the pillows. 

Dean closes his eyes, briefly, and Castiel can hear the prayer sent at him. _Please, let Castiel be able to heal him, I don’t need anything else except for my brother to be okay._ (Somewhere, subconsciously, he can make out the voice of someone telling him to “watch out for Sammy.”) _He’s my baby brother, please, don’t take him away from me again._ “Dean is real,” he says, voice cracking, “Dean is real.” 

“Prove it,” Sam whispers. It’s useless, really, Lucifer is a projection of Sam’s time in Hell to help him deal with everything that happened. Ergo, Lucifer is part of Sam’s mind, can almost be called part of his consciousness, but if it helps Sam, who is looking for any scrap of reality he can hold on to, who is Castiel to judge? (He’s to blame for it in the first place, he doesn’t even have the right to judge Sam for this.) 

“Alright,” Dean says. It can’t be easy, being told to prove your own existence, but Dean handles it so much better than Castiel thinks he should be able to. Humans are made to be self aware, to know that they exist and to take advantage of that knowledge. They are not made to prove themselves to others, to explain who they are and why they do what they do. (Castiel recalls a little boy, run away from home, who’d showed up at Emmanuel’s doorstep and begged for help. There were bruises on him, big and ugly, because he’d had to do exactly that, had to prove his existence to himself. Because his parents hadn’t let him be a human.) 

“Remember that time Dad left us on our own in the motel room, when I was about thirteen and you were nine? Right after school finished? You were still trying to do summer work, you nerd, and I was teasing you about it because there wasn’t anything good on TV and it’s always fun to get you riled up.” Dean takes a deep breath, smiling sadly. Castiel gets the feeling he is witnessing something deeply personal and almost wants to walk out. It is only Dean’s prayer that keeps him in place. “Anyway, you eventually told me to shut up and I told you to make me. You called me a jerk for the first time. Don’t even know where you picked that up from; I never said it around you. I asked if that was the best insult you could come up with and said it was only the kind a sissy girl would use. So, I called you a bitch, you bitch, and your eyes went so wide. The look on your face, Sammy, I’m telling you. Priceless.” Sam is staring at him, hooked on every word. “Believe me?” 

“Dean?” Sam nearly chokes on the word, it comes out so fast and he sits up, struggling with the motion. “Dean. Dean, you’re—"

“I’m real. I’m not going anywhere,” Dean says softly, bringing his taller brother up and tucking Sam’s head under his own, hugging him with glassy eyes. “I promise.”

Sam is crying, just a little, taking in shaky breaths as he presses his head into Dean’s chest and listens to his heartbeat. “I’m sorry,” he says, quiet and spent, “I’m sorry.” 

“Not your fault,” Dean returns, rubbing his brother’s back. “Sammy.” 

“Dean,” he whispers, saying the name almost reverently, before his tone morphs into surprise. (How are there any surprises anymore, Sam’s lived for one hundred and eighty years.) “Dean.” 

“I’ve got you,” Dean whispers back, holding Sam even tighter. “I’m here.” 

“Couldn’t tell,” Sam says, trying to explain himself, “He’s been so loud and he’s everywhere and I can’t, Dean, I can’t anymore, please.” 

“You’re alright, Cas is back,” Dean says, tone still low and soothing. “He’s going to help.” 

“No, no, no, not Castiel,” Sam says. “That’s Lucifer. Don’t you see him, Dean? Lucifer.” 

And just like that, they’ve lost him. 

Dean sends Castiel this look, one that tells him if he doesn’t fix this right now, Dean is just as likely to kill him as he is to deny every word that’s about to come out of his mouth. 

Castiel knows what this other feeling is. Despair. 

(He has never felt this way. Not when they were in the middle of the Apocalypse, not during the fight against Michael and Lucifer, not when he betrayed Sam and Dean. This empty, hopeless feeling is new and all he wants is for it to go away.) 

“I can’t fix him.” 

The look goes murderous and then, as Castiel suspected, denial settles in. Dean brings Sam’s arm back over his shoulder and tells his brother he has to walk, they’re going back to his room, _you have to try and get some sleep._ Sam manages the first and seems to accept the second, but doesn’t even consider the third as Dean leads him out of the room. 

Castiel trails behind the two, not wanting to intrude. He should be better than this. He should be able to do something about it all, but he can’t. 

The desire to punch a wall and scream is strangely human and he suspects that Dean won’t forgive him. Not this time. 

* * *

They’re watching Sam. Dean and Castiel, standing in the doorway and just watching him. It’s impossible to ignore the way his eyes flick to the empty chair at his side and then away, wincing occasionally. Dean wants to look away, but it’s Sam. So he doesn’t. 

He’s still staring when he asks, “What the hell do you mean you _can't_?” 

Castiel sighs. “I mean, there's nothing left to rebuild.” 

“Why not?” he says, asking for an explanation while making it seem more like a demand. 

“Because it crumbled. The pieces got crushed to dust by whatever's happening inside his head right now.” The lie feels funny. He has lied before, has experience, but it doesn’t make it any less unpleasant. 

Here’s something to think about: the Wall wasn’t alive, per se, wasn’t sentient, but it was still an entity. It had its own existence inside Sam’s head. When Death placed the soul back inside Sam’s body, he created the Wall so that it would hold back the flood of memories. However, they were all constantly pushing against the Wall, and what bits managed to leak through didn’t do much. They were just bothersome, itches, as Death had put it. So whenever Sam got too close to one of those, he would provoke the Wall and it would squirm, allowing more through for the next time Sam itched it. If this continued to happen, every memory Sam had of the Cage would come back, but slow enough for him to deal with them. Sam would have been _fine,_ had Castiel not stepped in and, in a moment of desperation that changes nothing, became the metaphorical wrecking ball and took the Wall down. 

_He took the Wall down._

Castiel is still coming to terms with the consequences of his actions. He promised that he would save Sam when he destroyed the wall, and here he is with grace and more power than any human on this planet and he can’t do a thing. Seeing him now hurts far more than he thought it would. Castiel didn’t get to see him after the Wall was gone (a sharp pain, right in his midsection, the angel blade sticking out of his contaminated body) nor was he around to see Sam’s decline. Dean explained it, that they went to Bobby’s house (Bobby who is dead) after a “talk” with Death and Sam told them about the hallucinations and that Lucifer was _right there_ and _talking to him_ and Dean had to _stop Sam from killing himself all alone in a warehouse because Lucifer told him to._ He managed it, Dean said, he managed it because he’s Sam Winchester, until a few days ago. He wasn’t sleeping. 

They never really understood what seeing Lucifer was like. Sam didn’t ever say how bad it actually was. (And that’s just it, isn’t it? They have had encounters with Lucifer, during the Apocalypse, but they haven’t spent time with him like Sam has. Dean knows Lucifer not only as Nick, but as Sam, and refuses to think about it. Castiel knows him for what he truly looks like, and was able to ignore him inside of Sam when it happened. But Sam has seen Lucifer as Nick and as a part of him, knows Lucifer better than any of them because he has been possessed and trapped and subdued and _tortured_ by him. Castiel doesn’t know what that’s like, Dean doesn’t know what that’s like, and Sam is the only one walking through this personal Hell. _They don’t know what Lucifer knows about Sam, they don’t know Lucifer like Sam does, and they have no way of helping because this is a connection between Dean’s baby brother and the Devil._

That, in the end, is the scariest thing about it all.)

Dean’s voice draws him back. “So, you're saying there's nothing? That he's going to be like this until his candle blows out?” 

“I'm sorry,” Castiel says, genuine. The somber note is his voice is nothing he has to look for, it’s there and he can tell Dean knows he means it. But it won’t leave an impact unless he _fixes_ this. “This isn't a problem I can make disappear. And you know that.” 

There is still something he can do, though. The idea is rising up, developing as Castiel considers it. It’s a little risky and certainly won’t be pleasant for him, but it’s of little consequence. This is his penance. “But I may be able to shift it.”

“Shift?” Dean asks, incredulous. 

Castiel steps closer to the bed. “Yeah, it would get Sam back on his feet.” He hopes. He will not be taking any memories of Hell away, only the coping mechanism that is slowly killing him. There’s no telling if Sam will be okay after this, he’s pulling away the cork (knocking out another peg keeping Sam together) and letting everything pass through, but Castiel has hope that Sam will process it. He sits on the bed, aiming to comfort Dean before he starts. “It's better this way. I'll be fine.” 

Sam flinches away from him. Behind Castiel, Dean asks, “Wait, Cas, what are you doing?” 

Castiel ignores him. “Now, Sam,” he starts, trying not to notice the way Sam’s eyes are wide, like he’s staring right into Lucifer’s eyes, “This may hurt. And if I can't tell you again.” Castiel pauses and moves his hand away from his side and brings it closer to Sam’s head. “I’m sorry I ever did this to you.” 

* * *

The first thing he registers is the ice. 

Immediately he can tell that what he bore witness to in Sam’s mind while searching for the Wall was _nothing._ This brushes against more than just his skin, this is bone deep and cold enough to shatter him if he tries to take a step, if he even tries to move. Castiel is sure he will die, even if just for a second. It takes a lot to get that kind of response from an angel, and the second thing he realizes is that his skin is burning. More specifically, his fingertips. Because they’re against Sam’s forehead and Sam’s forehead is of a normal human temperature, it’s Castiel who’s freezing. 

Sam grunts as the air grows impossibly colder, frost blooming on his trench coat and across his face, spreading to his fingers and he travels deep into Sam’s mind, pulls the plug and refuses to let it spill out all over his friend. His veins fill with lava as Lucifer’s presence travels from Sam’s mind to his, eating him alive as the heat licks up his arms and melts his brain, rendering it useless. He can hear a gasp, murmurs, a “Cas? Cas, is that you?” from something that sounds like Sam but that’s not possible, because Sam and Dean are gone. 

Who is Cas? He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember anything. All he can sense is a burning from ice and lava and everything in between and he thinks he might be dying. He might be dying and if this is what people have to go through he is glad most of them go to Heaven because this hellfire is awful. Heaven, to many, is a promise of eternity spent in happiness while he is lost, floating in a sea of hellhound blood and drowning as his wings stick to it, covered in thick tar and impossible to lift. 

(Somewhere, in the remnants of his consciousness, Castiel slips away as he looks at Sam, concerned with his shaggy hair and tired face, always willing to help others before himself because that’s who he is. He dealt with this, with _this_ and Castiel is really in disbelief now as to how Sam was walking around with this in his head, _how was he even alive?_ Castiel is an Angel of the Lord, he knows this, but he isn’t stronger than Sam Winchester because he is succumbing to Lucifer mere seconds after taking on the hallucinations. (They’re not real.) Sam walked around like this for months and only started dropping hints a week ago about how he felt. For a moment, he wonders if he can give this back to Sam and immediately the fire burns brighter. _How, exactly, was he even functioning?_ Castiel never knew, never realized that it would be like this. That this is what he did.) 

He is here to help Sam. This is what he is supposed to do. He tries to tell himself this, tell himself that these are hallucinations and that they are not real. He is seeing things. He is not freezing. He is not burning. He is not drowning. He is alive. 

They’re not real. They’re not real. They’re. Not. _Real._

He opens his eyes again, forgetting exactly when he closed them (Does he still have that control?) and looks at the hand inside Sam’s brain and realizes he’s taken away a coping mechanism. This is a coping mechanism. This was all a coping mechanism. 

Lucifer sits on the bed in front of him, all happy and loose and grinning that sharp, wicked smile that he has never seen hold an ounce of true joy. “Hello, brother,” he says, and the thing that was Castiel backs up on broken, splintering legs, mind slipping and melting and pouring out of him, sliding to the floor as Lucifer laughs and laughs and laughs.


End file.
